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[x]cube LABS is a leading digital strategy and solution provider specializing in enterprise mobility space. Over the years, we have delivered numerous digital innovations and mobile solutions, creating over $ 2 billion for startups and enterprises. Broad spectrum of services ranging from mobile app development to enterprise digital strategy makes us the partner of choice for leading brands.
Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Win the Game of Digital Transformation with a Comprehensive Strategy

When we talk about digital transformation, the quote from Richard Rohr sums it up completely. “The business world is changing so quickly that it can be hard to keep up” – but the businesses who accept the culture of change and transformation are well on their way to solidifying their prospects. So far there has been much talk on this aspect, and many attempts made to define it by discussing the current state of adoption of digital technologies. However, now, we should take a look at the different stages an organization goes through to achieve digital transformation and what plans and thoughts are involved in this journey to realize real change.

While the addition of new software applications provides a competitive advantage within the marketplace and stands out as the cornerstone of digital transformation. Therefore, to facilitate these game-changing innovations and digital transformations, enterprises need to rethink how they consume infrastructure by taking advantage of the resources that drive change.

By 2020, at least 55% of organizations will be digitally determined, transforming markets and re-imagining the future through new business models and digitally enabled products and services. Click To Tweet

Design Thinking: The Essential Ingredient for Digital Success

This innovation philosophy (read as Design Thinking) is rapidly gaining sway with ever-increasing C-suite executives leveraging it as a critical part in developing their IT and product development strategies. But what exactly is design thinking and how are the leading CIOs/ CTOs harnessing its power to leverage and build enhanced business value?

According to Gartner, design thinking practitioners observe and analyze user behavior to gain insights into their needs and wants. Thereby, they create digital products to acquire and retain customers based on the information they have. This sounds fairly simple. However, there is another dimension to this. Let us try to understand and appreciate the same. Design thinking is closely related to human-centered design — so much so that the terms are often used synonymously. Experts tend to differ both on the degree of difference between the philosophies, as well as whether there does exist a difference in practice.

Experts, such as Gartner analyst Marcus Blosch, say human-centered design is an umbrella term under which design thinking sits. If a human-centered design is a philosophy that puts people at the center of digital solutions and services that are being designed, design thinking includes the best practices used to build those solutions. “It’s about finding out people’s behavior, motivations, and needs and coming up with solutions and services to match,” according to Blosch. The human-centered design includes practices such as social network analysis or historical analysis. “The toolbox is wide and varied,” Blosch says.

On that score, Shelley Evenson, managing director of Accenture’s Fjord design consultancy, agrees. Evenson says that human-centered design falls under design thinking. “But they are really the same thing,” she says. Both leverage aspects of anthropology, sociology, and psychology to meet consumer desires.

Therefore the expression “starting with the customer and working backward” is the ethos from which design thinking springs. While it may look like common sense, enterprises have long taken the build-it-and-they-will-come tack.

For design thinking to succeed, it does require a culture change, and for that to happen, we also need to incorporate the best practices which help foster innovation as companies seek to renew themselves frequently to keep up with the pace of change and avoid the pitfalls which keep projects from succeeding. Those include:

Problem Framing: Earnest teams are often in a hurry to fix a problem without fixing its root cause. They don’t understand the scope of the issue plaguing their organization. Chris Pacione, CEO, LUMA Institute recommends firms “question the question” by exploring new ways of framing the problem accurately and ensuring teams are on the same page. “Teams that understand the real opportunity in the first place have a chance of success,” he says.

Empathy: One of the primary reasons why projects fail is the lack of understanding and compassion for stakeholders the initiatives intend to serve. Capturing insight isn’t easy, as end users don’t share a collective intelligence. Enterprises must design solutions keeping in mind those who install, repair or maintain them. This is where contextual inquiry and participatory design techniques come in handy.

Iteration: Corporate governance, which is linear-minded, tends to stifle innovation, which requires iterative approaches. Enterprises must allow for multiple failures associated with large or novel ideas. The faster time to market as a rule is unimportant in this day and age. Enterprises that iterate the quickest and do it well will win.

Project Failure Points: It is critical to identify areas that aren’t working and fix them. That’s one of the advantages of iteration; designers and engineers can fix bugs and ux design quirks on a rolling basis, from the inception of minimally viable products to fully-baked commercial solutions.

Collaboration: Enterprises today are living under the constant threat of disruption. They have to come up with excellent ideas and need to collaborate with other departments, plus their clients, to get them implemented. Moreover, share the best practices of working that are more visually imaginative and creative.

IDC forecasts global spending on the technology and services that enable digital transformation will reach $1.18 trillion in 2019, an increase of 17.9% over 2018. Click To Tweet

Exploring Digital Myths

Digital transformation possesses the capacity to be transformative; when done right, a digital transformation can enable your business to earn significant, and well-documented, benefits. However, with many things IT, there comes a tendency to get caught up in the hype and not being able to see and think through the hard truths of execution until the promise doesn’t live up to the expectation.

The fundamental concepts and strategies of digital transformation are not new and have been tried and tested for some time now. “The idea of rethinking how an enterprise uses technology in pursuing new revenue streams or business models has been central to business, and it continues to build and accelerate in the transformative age of digital today,’’ notes Michael Kanazawa, at Ernst & Young. For those who have been continuously innovating and leveraging new technologies, there is no hype, he adds. “There is a constant push to innovate business as fast as new technologies enable breakthroughs in value and business performance, and that’s a journey,” he says, “not a moment in time to be hyped.”

Here are the seven myths about digital transformation by industry, business, and IT experts to reflect upon :

Myth No. 1: Digital Transformation Is an IT Function

New and emerging digital capabilities are affecting all areas of an organization. It’s important to remember that the change is just as much about leadership as the technology, says Janice Miller, director of leadership programs and product management at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, a leadership development firm. Also, digital technology needs an entirely new mindset that needs to be borne by each member at an enterprise level. Most of the times this change is narrowed down as mere software implementations which fail to realize the potential that was envisioned. Therefore, it’s not only about the right team, but a  pan-organization culture that is willing to accept meaningful change.

Myth No. 2: Real Transformation Is a Blue Chip’s Journey

The truth is that real transformation comes from disruptors who do not possess or have a large market share. Large corporations think that they can dominate their industries, the reason being they have been successful in the past. However, even established companies like Starbucks are trying to stay competitive by continually looking at their processes and making changes, experimenting with their stores.

Most companies do not look at or create process maps; only when they start losing market share that they try out new things to remain competitive. Therefore, digital transformation ignites and works best when the conditions are tough.

Myth No. 3: Digital Transformation Is About Reducing the Workforce

As digital transformations often make use of emerging AI and machine learning capabilities, many believe that the end game of digital transformation is fewer roles for humans. “However as good as AI and machine learning might become in the near future, you still need human beings,” says Andy Bennett, senior vice president of IoT EcoStruxure at Schneider Electric, a Paris-based corporation that focuses on energy management and automation in buildings and other structures.

The truth is that with more automation and analytics put in place, there will be a need for more human beings to drive the algorithms. While there is an inherent belief associated with data analytics and AI that it will result in equipment not breaking or not requiring any service, factually this is not the case. We could pre-empt and get to things just in time to fix it which would then definitely require a capable workforce ready to deliver.

Myth No. 4. Digital Transformation Is All About Technology

There is a widespread perception that businesses need to bring in new tools, models, and skills to compete on a new playing field, says Seth Robinson, senior director of technology analysis at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the technology industry.

CompTIA research shows that while businesses have an appreciation for strategic IT, they are not necessarily prepared to execute on that vision, he says. 78% of the firms surveyed say they are using technology to drive business outcomes, but only 28 % are extremely confident in their ability to apply technology to business goals, says Robinson.

Myth No. 5: Executive Buy-in Is a Must Thing

For any project to be successful, you need buy-in and continuous support from upper management; digital transformations are no different. Senior executives are mostly reluctant to give the go-ahead to these projects because they are often complex and daunting, says Andriole, who is also a business consultant.

“It’s more about lip service than it is about reality.” And often, they have the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it syndrome.”  In those instances, Andriole suggests looking inward. He poses the question; What do you really see?” If there is no real reason to deploy a digital initiative or commitment on the part of management, he says, don’t do it.

Myth No. 6: Digital transformation brings IT-business harmony

“Successful digital transformations require collaboration between IT and the business, but if you think IT-business harmony is the guaranteed outcome of a digital transformation, you may want to think again,” says Schneider Electric’s Bennett, “I think it’s a fallacy. They don’t get along very well. They come from very different starting points. People really forget there’s a fundamental human road bump that’s in the mix that will take years and years and years to work through. It’s a big change management issue to work through.”

Myth No. 7. the Digital Journey Ends at the Implementation

Dan Doggendorf has learned from experience that digital transformation is not always the silver bullet for solving a business problem. Doggendorf, vice president of business operations and CIO for the Dallas Stars NHL hockey team, says his eyes were opened after the deployment of a new phone system with reporting capabilities to track sales data. As they began looking at systems, he says “requirements started getting bigger and bigger, and when [sales executives would] see a demo, they wanted more.”

IT bought a system with a lot of functionality, “and quite honestly, the only thing they use is the dashboard,” he notes. There are very few organizations who do a post-evaluation on technology deployment to glean what it has done for them and what the ROI is, Doggendorf observes.

Understanding Digital Transformation Drivers

Enterprises often embark on digital transformations to counter the potential for disruption from incumbents and startups. Consider Amazon.com’s steady march across nearly every retail vertical. This has added to the consumer expectations for not only how quickly they receive goods, but the consistent availability of products, says Tyagarajan.

Taking a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook, retailers like Target and Walmart are using algorithms to complement logistics and ensure that anything from food items to beauty aids quickly makes their way from local warehouses — to replenish their stores before they run out of stock. “Retail and consumer goods need to reinvent themselves to meet ever-changing customer needs continually,” Says Genpact CEO, Tiger Tyagarajan.

Staying ahead of the competition with new technology offerings is another digital transformation driver. For example, restaurant chains such as TGI Fridays and IHOP, fearful of being rendered irrelevant by hipper, more tech-savvy boutique brands, are experimenting with virtual helper applications such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa to facilitate mobile ordering, in hopes that millennial customers will cling on to their brands.

Transforming products into services is another critical motivation. Digital twins, for example, are a new reality in the manufacturing sector. Organizations from General Electric to Boeing and McDermott International are creating software versions of their physical assets, ideally to generate application revenue.

Think about the disruption Uber has brought into the transportation sector, literally forcing everyone from taxi companies to car rental service providers to automakers to incorporate similar ride-sharing or other on-demand services, including bikes and scooters, into their business models.

How to Optimize and Put Costs Under Control

CIOs must reconcile legacy investments for which business value has not been adequately tracked. Driving digital change is hard when you don’t have your financial house in order; it is imperative to do so before tackling or initiating any innovation in support of a digital transformation.

“CIOs are under a lot of pressure right now; there is a ton of expectations around digital transformation and CIOs are figuring out how to move money left to right in a way that is responsible,” says Trevor Schulze, former CIO of chipmaker Micron.

The trick, Schulze says, is figuring out how to shift money tied up in legacy investments to innovation. “We had to control costs but at the same time, invest and be strategic,” Schulze says. “But we didn’t have enough insight into where the money was being spent.”

IDC predicts DX-related software spending will total $253 billion in 2019. With IaaS at 35.9%, application development & deployment software at 26.7%, and business services 26.5% CAGR respectively. Click To Tweet

By implementing a technology business management (TBM) taxonomy and accounting software from Apptio, Schulze was able to identify contracts to phase out in favor of cloud services and innovation investments. Increasingly, RPA, ML, and AI are being brought to bear on such challenges, as underscored by Genpact’s partnership with Walmart.

Conclusion

Change is difficult for any organization. Once it is underway, the going can be sluggish and slow. However, in an era of Digital Darwinism where businesses must “adapt or die,” ignoring change is not an option. With a lot of work to be done, it starts by making the case, ringing the alarm bells, and creating a sense of urgency that puts threats and opportunities front and center. The pace of technology isn’t slowing. In fact, it’s only accelerating, and its impact on customer and employee behavior (and expectations) is happening faster than most enterprises can comprehend or react.

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Blog, Digital Strategy, Enterprise Mobility, Mobility

How Mobility Solutions Are Transforming the Manufacturing Industry

Mobility-Solutions-Big Banner

Industry 4.0 is currently generating tremendous noise and drift for data exchange and automation in manufacturing technologies together with IoT, cloud computing, cognitive computing, and cyber-physical systems. Mobile technology is one of the fundamental driving forces behind Industry 4.0, creating “smart factories” and streamlining manufacturing operations with mobility. While most of them have been slow to adopt the benefits of technology, manufacturers aren’t unaware of the substantial tangible improvements other industries are undergoing with the implementation of mobile technology and organizations are noticing improvements in their divisions. Mobility in manufacturing is bringing intensification across all divisions, optimizing from the shop floor to the warehouse to management. Even IT leaders cannot overlook the hazard of production downtime and competitive benefits of improving productivity using mobile devices and solutions.

The Need for Mobility Solutions in Manufacturing Companies

While global expansion strategy forms the core of the emerging need for mobility solutions in most of the manufacturing companies, it is equally important to meet the ever-growing expectations of consumers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. For example, an automobile manufacturer sold auto spare parts to its partners. As the demand for spare parts increased, they felt the need and launched a mobile app to manage the demand-supply gap. Now consumers can place an order for more spare parts online. This helps them reduce cost and improve productivity in the long way. Therefore, to remain competitive, manufacturers must look out for efficiencies in production and the capacity to deliver a broader mix of customized products. This demands operational processes and production lines to be integrated and flexible to allow fast configuration changes and reduced load times, without compromising on quality or safety.

Adoption of mobility solutions by manufacturing enterprises helps to improve their capacities which manifest in the form of improvement in enterprise processes.

Credit: Ericsson Mobility Report June 2018

81% of Industrial Manufacturing CEOs said that they plan to rely on operational efficiencies to bolster growth via enhanced competitiveness. Click To Tweet

Key Advantages of Mobility Solutions

Data and information play a crucial role in implementing business processes right from marketing to manufacturing. Mobility holds the key to the prospect of managing your business from anywhere at any time. Moreover, it shares real-time updates for decision makers. Mobility also provides information during an emergency and therefore manages the uncertain situations well

Portability – Mobile apps are designed for on the go, anytime usage. The right mobile solution can reduce the need to return to a fixed-point to review checklists, receive information or fulfill orders. For example, tablets allow workers to conduct quality checks, send out alerts for any problems and instantly update job status on an order or machines.

Real-Time Problems / Real-Time Solutions – Instead of anticipating problems and outcomes based on earlier performance and trends, it is critical for organizations to have the ability to figure out an issue while there is time to correct it. Learning about errors, malfunctions or other problems after the fact, could delay progress, whereas the management team and staff can be alerted instantly of issues in real-time. Therefore situational awareness can extend the reaction time and lead to positive outcomes and better customer relationships as well.

Accessibility Increases Worker Productivity – Choosing mobile tablets can lead to better productivity of warehouse workers as people respond well to current technology which is easy to understand. Rather than having to visit the fixed workstation repeatedly, workers can perform tasks on the go. Employees are already embracing mobility in their personal life, therefore the traditional learning curve when introducing innovative technology, systems or processes are reduced to a great extent and will arguably, disappear in a few years’ time.

Precision Monitoring –  With GPS locations in vogue, it allows manufacturing organizations to analyze their logistics and figure out where they are being inefficient or losing time in their freight management duties. Instant updates allow team leaders to check the status of any order at any time, or to find raw materials and goods arriving instantly. For businesses with active on field sales staff(s), the ability to both check inventory and input sales on the go increases efficiency tremendously and can boost customer relationships in the process.

Mobility in the manufacturing industry is trending like other industries and is the reason many companies give mobile devices to their staff and discourage BYOD to avoid risk. However, for the company-owned devices as well, organizations should be extra vigilant for the security of the devices as well as business data. Organizations need to address security concerns and place adequate security measures for mobile device management to prevent data theft and misuse of the devices for personal entertainment which eventually leads to wastage of time and productivity decline.

86% of CEO's say a clear vision of how Digital technologies including Mobile can create competitive advantage is key to the success of their investments. Click To Tweet

Some Operational Benefits of Mobility

  • Increases overall productivity
  • Ensures cost reduction with increased efficiency
  • Real-time monitoring and faster access to critical information
  • Facilitates collaboration between people at all levels
  • Rapid product development
  • Improve RoI
  • Increase in sales
  • Enhance customer satisfaction
  • Manage regulatory compliance

Reduce Time to Market and Achieve Optimal Efficiency

In this increasingly connected world, manufacturing intelligence is the new normal. The choice of connectivity determines the planning, materials, build quality and flexibility of a manufacturer’s digital foundation. This adds to the possibilities and ultimately increases the value it brings to their operations, enabling smarter resource management. It affects which equipment and operations can be connected, how many assets and processes can run simultaneously, and how well it scales beyond one geographical site to achieve optimal efficiency. Mobility is helping with data collection, and manufacturers are applying advanced pattern detection and predictive analytics to simplify steps and eliminate delays by pulling the right levers to get ahead of production cost trends and generate good market speed.

Bottom Line

Mobility is making manufacturers compete in their prospects and customers timeframes while delivering higher value in less time than before. Therefore manufacturers and their suppliers must generate and share vast amounts of digital data about the design, dimensions, quality, and location of components. Additionally, tracking their journey through the factory and beyond is imperative. They must manage complex flows of physical materials and become data managers. Yes, we anticipate a growth in the number of data engineers in the flexible plant to almost double between now and 2030.

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Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Internet of Things

5 Ways to Make a Successful Connected Product Launch

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For new players entering the IoT space, the stakes are rather high. For one, the time required to develop is longer for hardware than for software, which makes it difficult to pivot if the product-market fit is not achieved initially. Moreover, the success rate in the consumer IoT space, in particular, is meager—even the intrepid hardware investors who work with an IoT original device manufacturer have plenty of apprehensions about the consumer side.

In a rush to get on the Internet of Things (IoT) bandwagon, enterprises are trying to make their products smarter by combining connectivity and intelligence. Under ideal circumstances, these products are reckoned to make customers’ lives simpler. However, in reality, or practice, how do “smart” products function?

Making Your IOT Project a Success

Whether it’s a pilot or a mini IoT project added to a more massive non-IoT project, make it relevant by addressing a real need. This assures support and visibility from the business, whether it’s as simple as time to answer your queries, involvement from management or contribution of resources. Equally significant, it gives you a foundation from which to build follow-up projects. The proliferation of many smart products that people don’t need helps to explain why fearless predictions for the growth of IoT are being readjusted. For instance, Ericsson has shaved 20 billion off of its 2010 forecast that there would be 50 billion Internet-connected devices by 2020. Gartner says the IoT market is experiencing “inflated expectations,” with many companies struggling to find use cases for their ideas.

Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach $745 billion in 2019, an increase of 15.4% over the $646 billion spent in 2018 Click To Tweet

5 Questions to Ask About Your Smart Product

The reality is that, while IoT is new and exciting, succeeding in this market requires a few basic rules of product innovation.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Carey Smith, founder of fan and light manufacturer Big Ass Solutions, shares some of those basic rules. His advice is based on his experience of building smart fans that didn’t exactly become a massive hit in the market. He recommends asking five questions before launching an intelligent product or feature:

1. Does it answer a real customer need? Enterprises need to understand their customers deeply, to deliver genuinely innovative products. “The traditional business model is based on identifying a need and meeting it, or defining a problem and solving it,” Smith writes. “So far, most connected products have been solutions in search of problems to solve.”

2. How big is the market for this product? “Just like a carpenter must measure twice before cutting, manufacturers should poll their customers at least twice before committing to the new technology,” writes Smith. Don’t believe in your own hype—talk to consumers to validate that you have a market.

3. What are the economics? Your forecast should cover both revenue and costs.

4. Should we outsource manufacturing? While doing it in-house is a huge commitment, outsourcing brings unexpected expenses, according to Smith.

5. What’s the impact on customer experience? As you enter the IoT market, you’ll need to have staff who are equipped to engage with technologically advanced users.

IoT software spending will total $154 billion in 2019 and will see the fastest growth over the five-year forecast period with a CAGR of 16.6%. Click To Tweet

Don’t Commit Smart Mistakes

Ultimately, winning in the IoT landscape isn’t only about possessing the right technology. Brands who fancy a first-mover advantage in making connected products smarter, need to add value to their customers’ lives—and to do so, they need insight on real customer pain points. In the long term, companies also need to keep up with evolving customer attitudes and preferences and continue to consider unmet needs.

Let’s consider the case of Salesforce who raced to announce its AI product Einstein ahead of competitor Oracle, whom they suspected might announce a similar product at the Dreamforce conference.

Salesforce earned a lot of media coverage, but then the same media went on to observe their every move and misstep, including the fact that Salesforce had to partner with IBM Watson to build the product they announced in September of 2016.  While Salesforce had hardly locked down the market by being the first enterprise solution provider to announce its AI: Other competitors in the fray went on to capitalize the media interest with technology what only Salesforce had promised.

Being first-to-market without the actual product ready to back it up is little more than flagging the way for the competition. Those very reporters who wanted to believe in a groundbreaking solution now looked out for alternative solutions that could deliver.

That’s not to say that people will ever need smart coffee-maker that can talk. Rather, willing to bet they won’t.

Focus on a Niche Sector to Stay Relevant in the Game or Be Annihilated

By concentrating on ways to secure a corner of the IoT industry, smaller manufacturers can not only ensure that they stay out of the radar of major companies but build devices with longevity. Working up in the IoT devices space is quickly noticed by the ecosystem leaders. Higher-ups at large-scale enterprises have access to data at their fingertips about which devices are selling well, generating traffic, garnering positive reviews, and so on. Therefore, one of the apparent safe spaces for IoT based projects are those that develop B2B applications. It’s less likely that a prominent ecosystem player is going to get into the B2B space. IoT enterprises have more flexibility, for example in automating fertilizer distribution on a farm or controlling a power plant. Building off existing devices and connecting them to create even greater ease of use is also a kind of success.

An example of this is the Amazon Echo and Google Home. As both of them currently enjoy high acceptance in people’s homes. Also, they connect to the existing ecosystem and with each other, which makes things even easier for the user. You can set music to play on your Google Home. You could connect multiple Google Home Minis throughout the house in different rooms.

Conclusion

In this supersaturated tech landscape filled with enterprises and products that will fail, there’s little or no room for error. Project teams should be nimble and agile to react to the unplanned. Project plans should allow for larger exigencies by keeping sponsors and owners in the loop, who are not averse to change. It is critical to building a project team with members who are selected based on their ability to quickly adapt and learn, as well as for their knowledge and execution skills. Finally, a well-timed launch of a fully-realized product helps an enterprise catch and ride the media wave of awareness and relevance.

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Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Leveraging Data and Insights to Drive Innovation

Leveraging Data &Insights to drive Innovation_Big

The last few decades have seen a wave of technological revolution that has to a large extent changed the way we live and work. Many of the familiar devices and services delivered have become digital — from Internet-based banking, music, films, and shopping. In addition, social media sites empower us to interact with friends, family, and businesses in new ways. All of which leaves a data trail which is visible to companies that provide these services to leverage upon.

Enterprises need to ask the question: “ Is our business strategy still relevant in a digital world?” With the mass adoption of digital products and services,  consumers are generating huge volumes of personal data across all aspects of their lives, which is captured by organizations through digital channels or devices.

While data about a person’s friendship networks, hobbies and interests are captured on social media,  details of their shopping patterns are captured by online retailers. In addition to these established data sources, technological developments contribute to new sources of consumer data that provides unique insights into consumer behavior. We look into how businesses can harness and filter the insights from this information through social media analytics and digital analytics to drive innovation and improve customer experience.

Socialize Data and Share the Vision:

In most enterprises, the journey toward becoming more data-driven or data-informed is uneven. Enterprises need to move away from isolated data platforms, meant to support a business unit or role, to centralized platforms with multi-team access. This technology shift will create the required synergy with today’s cross-departmental, design-thinking collaboration strategies. Instead of teams maintaining their own work styles and dedicated discrete projects, enterprises need to form diverse teams from different groups and environments that share expertise and knowledge.

This type of culture aims to make the knowledge held by data and people hyper-collaborative and accessible across the company. Customer purchase histories, addresses, and persona, for example, aren’t available only for sales and marketing. Other business interest groups and project teams should access this valuable CRM data for their goals to leverage business and operations insights.

Data-Driven Cultures Work Together to Empower Teams

With data being available to all and free from silos, employees working in marketing, supply chain, finance, and other groups could have first-hand knowledge of the business processes of all the groups concerned. Their in-the-trenches expertise makes them the best source for engaging with the data and pushing it toward creating better business outcomes. Teams, working under a comprehensive data framework plan, need centralized analytics tools that let them interact with the data. A platform that enables assigned levels of access and role-based security keeps data-driven cultures within the defined framework outlined by the IT departments. Most importantly, this modern-day approach is faster than earlier models, for example in the past, a data query was sent to IT and a report would get generated weeks later. In the current scenario with data-driven culture, and constantly evolving technology lets a functional-expert query and wields the data to visualize the results immediately.

69% of outperforming organizations combine technology with business to innovate Click To Tweet

Executive Support Separates Data-Driven Cultures from Traditional Businesses

In a data-driven culture, leaders encourage employees to understand and interact with data for necessary action. Teams have the freedom to act upon, review, and respond to the results.  It’s plausible that not all results will be positive, and learning would come from both good and bad outcomes. What is critical, is feeding data into models and promoting an iterative process so that business decisions based on the outcomes are mature and precise over time.

In tandem with this support, data-driven leaders rely on dashboards in their day-to-day activities and they give credit to the data which is at the core of the business decisions and results achieved. This creates transparency with regards to change and shifts in the business. Since the irrefutable data serves as the role model, everyone in the organization get on board and begin to practice data to work, innovate and gain insight.

Realizing an Adaptive Enterprise

With changes underway, the possibilities are endless. Enterprises can enter into new markets, proceed with the desired demographic, or create business models around untapped assets. Data will reveal itself in unexpected ways, as businesses become more empathetic and aware of their customers’ needs. Under Armour, for example, created apps tied to Fitbit for its customers committed to exercise. Once an enterprise puts itself in its customers’ shoes, it can build service models and products that cut costs, create efficiencies, and improve customer engagement.

57% of outperforming organizations are good at translating insight into action Click To Tweet

This insight to empathy is only possible in an adaptive enterprise, which is derived from a data-driven culture. They respond to customers, partners, and market changes in real time based on insights from data. To stay ahead, they constantly ask:  Where are we now? What did we do today? Where are we headed?

Adaptive enterprises respond to those queries through a mixture of reports, that is more experimental and agile. They look at marketplace activities, including tests, trials, and theories that are revolutionizing the industry and causing disruptions. Adaptive enterprises assimilate these two modes to present a common view across the business. From this central platform, teams throughout the company can test and hypothesize, productize, and operationalize by manipulating the data. They run multiple tests and iterations, to pour the learnings back into the business.

Conclusion

Data is as vital as oil for the digital economy and is at the center of dictating insight-driven business transactions – from decision-making to cross-departmental collaboration. Businesses deal with plenty of data across the width and breadth, creating an opportunity to deliver insights and drive material outcomes to gain a competitive advantage. Reaching this inflection point starts with enterprises committing to redefining their businesses and creating data-driven cultures. This culture can spread when businesses establish three goals: break down data silos, engage teams through leadership and empower teams to explore data to drive better outcomes and insights that can be used to make a company’s offerings more relevant to its customers

Key things about your digital strategy your employees must know
Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Key Things About Digital Strategy Your Employees Must Know

Key things about your digital strategy your employees must know

“There’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age1

In the new digital world, the interpretation of success is no longer linked primarily to efficiency, but to business agility. Enterprises need to seize the available digital opportunities in a rapidly changing business environment while acknowledging the needs of your technology-powered customers and acting quickly to successfully implement the digital strategy. At present, very few organizations are still operating through the hierarchical models, in which decisions are taken in a traditional top-down manner. Instead, organizations operating in the digital business orb have chosen loose hierarchies in which responsibility sits closer to the point of impact where each decision is felt. Also, enterprises are shifting the focus toward outcomes and away from the processes performed to achieve those outcomes.

Industry Trends

In order to succeed in this world of digital transformation, it is imperative that organizations must design a digitally connected and collaborative work atmosphere – or endure the risk of being left behind. Therefore, for the new digital workplace to thrive, it needs the employees to be equally aware. Employees have to start thinking on a new level in the non-physical world and see the enterprise as it should and could be, not only what it is currently. They should be cognizant of what has worked and has not worked in the digital world. Digital leaders also play a critical role in this as they need to be able to bestow confidence, build an environment of inclusiveness so that enterprises don’t fear to embark on new projects.

Since 2010, 13 million new jobs have been created, 30% of which requires high-level digital skills, which are filled with ease by millennials. Click To Tweet

Accountability Is Key

While you are on your marks and ready to create your strategy, it is necessary that you clearly define the roles of everyone who are set to be a part of the project. Leadership and management roles are particularly significant to discuss. In order to be successful, the aim is to keep every employee on the same page when it comes to strategic decision making. This will help to check the project from stalling in case of organizational or leadership changes. By precisely defining roles and responsibilities, a detailed digital strategy will reduce the impact of these changes in the days to come. By making sure that everyone is on the same page and placing strong support for the cause, this can prove to be priceless and ensures that an approved strategy moves forward without any further delay.

Set Appropriate Calls to Action & Measure Your KPI’s

As always, original content plays a big role in any well-thought-out digital strategy. But great content will never be enough on its own. It is important that you always remember the actual reason for building your site – and it isn’t to just fill it with a copy. You must decide what the purpose of your site is and what the content you’re creating is meant to do. Where are you trying to drive your visitors? What do you want them to do? You should be able to answer these questions and then create effective calls-to-action (CTAs) to drive them home. You need to put them in a position where they can easily make a purchase, register or call once they visit your website.

Along with generating powerful CTAs, it is critical that you are prepared to consider which key performance indicators (KPIs) you wish to measure moving forward. Choosing these carefully will allow you to effectively demonstrate the value that your digital strategy is providing to your organization. Both time and energy should be committed to this step. Failure to do so will make attributing successes of future projects much harder than they need to be. The strategy developed, will need to be tailored to the goals of your business and these components should be considered while planning. By including them into your game plan, your digital strategy will be up and running in no time.

New Organization Goals in the Context of Digital / Long Term Vision

New organizational/enterprise models also need a new attitude toward leadership. Leaders of connected teams in agile organizations require skills such as negotiation, resilience, and systems thinking. At times, the most seasoned leaders and business unit heads may not be the best fits to take charge of digital, agile, connected teams. Effective leaders in a connected environment must have a high degree of network intelligence to catch the drift of their enterprise, the industry and throughout the customer marketplace.

As connected enterprises continue to emerge, new tools are starting to make collaboration simpler.  Google Team Drives, Atlassian Confluence, Facebook’s Workplace, Slack, Microsoft Skype, and hundreds of others are helping to expedite the transition to networks of teams. Nearly 75% of enterprises are now experimenting with these tools—and benefiting in novel ways. For example, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS) in Sydney runs three venues: Sydney Observatory, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Museum’s Discovery Centre in Castle Hill. Jira, an agile management tool,  is used for all aspects of the project (MAAS) — facilities, staffing, security, PR, and marketing, as well as digital education. By using HipChat, an auto distributor in Maine monitors tire pressures and repair items in its warehouses.

With digital being ubiquitous 55% of employees felt they could be more informed and engaged if they could communicate using a mobile app Click To Tweet

Short Term or Immediate Execution Plan

Take a moment to consider your target market. Odds are you are trying to reach a variety of consumers with diverse backgrounds, traits, and habits. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all strategic approach will do little to address the motivations driving each unique personality type.

Creating individual personas that describe your audience can help you make important decisions while building your strategy. Personas are an excellent way to identify the key target audiences you wish to attract while revealing specific goals for each one. The more research and effort you invest in defining your audiences, the more refined and effective your strategy will end up being. You should also consider performing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis during this step.

How Digital Strategy Changes Internal Processes, Goals, and Priorities

To build the enterprise of the future, digital employees need “the capacity to find and delegate information to the right people without risking security. Unassuming communication with intelligent tools to support work processes will help to form teams quickly and work with networks outside their enterprise. A comprehensive, personalized and context-sensitive learning environment will build a fully functioning digital workplace and encourage employee engagement.  This is especially true if workers can access the digital workplace from different devices, which helps people work more efficiently on their own time. While the dimensions of space, capability, and intelligence are immersive and pervasive, this dimension helps to realize that the digital enterprise will embody more and more of what we need to do each day.

What Employees Can Do in Their Individual Capacity to Help in This Journey

The proliferation of information technology is revolutionizing the ways in which employees connect, communicate and collaborate.

This change accelerated over the last couple of years due to the development of three major trends:

  • Evolving workforce: With the baby boomers about to retire, experience is leaving the company, reinforcing the need to capture it. On the other hand, the new generation of workers are very IT savvy and expect to have pliant, easy to use tools just as they have in their individual lives
  • Data overload: while data is available and ever- growing at exponential rates, still  employees can’t find what they need, even with technological advancement
  • Need for speed: With the lively pace of today’s work environment, employees need to work faster and collaborate more productively to get their jobs done

Due to rapid workplace demographic changes, employers strive to meet the changing needs of a multi-generational workforce.  As the availability and use of the Internet and mobile devices grows, the pace of change continues to accelerate. These changes are further intensified by open-ended demands to increase productivity and cut costs, making it tougher for employees to meet market expectations. Together, these bearings are reshaping the work environment.

The goal of digital strategy is to create relevant foundations for digital business. This means creating an enterprise that can pursue to reinvent itself as necessary to keep up with changes in technology and customer expectations. Digital strategy should be visionary enough to carry enterprises through shifts in the digital economy, in a way that continues to bring a digital edge to the business.

Blog, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Why Speed Is Critical in Innovation

We talk about innovation at scale, but innovation at speed is just as important. Being able to innovate fast and cheap, test digital products and services in the market, perfect them, and deliver them on a regular basis, is, not surprisingly, a significant competitive advantage. And yet, there are far too many articles written, with regular frequency, that lament how enterprises move slowly, and fail to innovate at the right pace. Therefore, we figured a quick reminder of why speed is a critical aspect of innovation and will serve as an effective reminder that innovation is not just about new things, or about doing them in new ways, but also about doing them fast.

So why does speed matter at all, when it comes to innovation? Most of the answers below are common sense, but there might still be a surprise for you.

Benefits of Speed:

Improving speed to market leads to diverse financial and nonfinancial gains. Greater agility has the potential to boost gross sales and shareholder value. The financial gains are often directly measurable and hugely exceed the upfront costs of introducing speed-to-market strategies to the organization. Some examples of the benefits of speed are:

Faster Innovation:

If an enterprise innovates quickly, it naturally gains the first-mover advantage. The first-mover advantage typically results in gaining quick market share, a headstart on iterative improvement, and a significant window for building a moat around the business powered by the new innovation.

As enterprises learn to move fast, they often go into a virtuous cycle and see their growth accelerate further. This is essentially the culture of speed. As, innovation and efficiency increase, the competitive advantage for the fast enterprise becomes significant. No enterprise in any industry can expect to move forward with a slow culture; by purpose, entrepreneurship is all about moving forward and promoting innovation forward.

Source BCG Global Innovation Survey

Lower Research and Development Cost

Limited and focused iterations, streamlined processes, and decreased slack release financial and operating resources for other value-adding activities are the need of the hour. Enterprises need to diligently balance plans for more effective and better results. And the basic logic is simple: when you develop and launch an innovative product or service quickly, you also invariably reduce your pre-launch investment in it. Post-launch, if you have the right product-market fit, you can always invest more and refine your innovation further. But initially, keeping the cost low (by launching quickly) is a significant advantage, as it frees up your organizational resources to focus on other innovations, as well as on improving the just-launched innovation on the basis of real-world feedback.

Larger Market Share

A swift introduction also gives a product more time to increase its market share before it fades into being a commodity. A product that goes to market quickly is unlikely to face early competition. Brand leadership and loyalty are usually awarded to first-movers, but one must continue to evolve to avoid being overtaken by competitors.

While first-movers have the privilege of capturing undivided consumer mindshare, attention, and brand loyalty before competitors emerge on the scene. Let’s consider some real-life examples of the first-mover advantage. Here are a few of my favorites.

Through 2021, IDC predicts that Innovation Accelerator markets to grow by more than 18% Click To Tweet

Kelloggs: James Caleb Jackson in 1863 is credited to have created the first Graham flour based cereal called Granula but it didn’t attract as much. It was shortly after, when surgeon John Harvey Kellogg made a similar kind of cereal, and named it granola, and debuted with his younger brother, that Corn Flakes with added sugar came into being. Thereafter they started mass-marketing their brand, which then really started to take off and they seized the first-mover advantage.

Let’s go down the memory lane – remember when Amazon sold only books? They were the first major online bookseller and a force in the reckoning, who rocked the longtime brick-and-mortar stalwarts like Barnes & Noble and Borders as they didn’t stand a chance. Borders group shuttered in 2011 and Barnes & Noble — Where Amazon’s Jeff Bezos used to have company meetings — has steadily seen share prices falling, revenue, layoffs, and store closures.

Ironically, Amazon has even overstepped on Barnes & Noble’s physical store center over the past few years. With fast shipping, an increasing number of Prime members, and incredibly low prices have placed Amazon to seemingly unbeatable market share and space.

With Kindle, Amazon knocked off Barnes & Noble by the punch again with their 2007 e-reader. Barnes & Noble answered them back with the Nook in 2007, but it was too late. While Nook initially peaked as a $933 million per year business, but, in 2016, they announced meagre earnings of just $146 million.

Two years of Kindle brand loyalty was able to overcome an initial market share grip by Barnes & Noble, which had lost $1.3 billion on Nook in the last six years.

Greater Forecasting accuracy

One of the biggest challenges that enterprises face is forecasting demand for new products over time. Exceed it, and risk warehouses full of excess inventory. Underestimate it, and your customers could leave empty-handed or you might be left with a huge bill for expedited delivery. Therefore with a shorter time frame between product design and product release, enterprises would be interested to take it to market.

Per IDC, market size of worldwide cloud system & services is $5.6 billion and is poised to grow at a CAGR of 24% for the period 2018–2023 Click To Tweet

A case in point worthy of a mention: In a new study conducted by Van Mieghem and Doug Thomas of Penn State University, researchers partnered with Dell to analyze sales data from over a hundred of the company’s products. While companies count significantly on managers’ experience and market research, researchers observed that companies like Dell could use past data from previous products to better forecast accuracy on new products by as much as 9%. This essentially means millions of dollars of worth savings.

Design the system for Speed

From an innovation attitude, we can count on two aspects to speed: firstly the rate at which enterprises develop new products and services, and secondly the pace at which they deliver those products and services to market. Enterprises insist on one or the other; for example, innovation leaders emphasize development and fast followers concentrate on delivery. Therefore, enterprises who have designed their systems, structures, processes, and cultures for speed in either context tend to keep four things in common:  application of lean processes, prototyping, and iterations, with committed innovation staff, and follow the right metrics.

Conclusion:

Fast innovators have long manifested that by shortening the innovation and product development cycles and tapering the time to market can be a potent source of competitive advantage. However, with the increasing importance on speed, even enterprises that already operate on lean processes and are fast, infer that a new awareness is dawning: the need for speed is itself rising.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Technology, Weekly Insights

Top 15 Must Read Books On Digital Strategy

Must Reads Books On Digital Strategy

In an era of digital transformation where there’s information aplenty but lack of clarity on how to get started, a comprehensive description of changes it entails and technologies to get accustomed with, a list of tried and tested titles on the topic could be handy. Here’s a curated list targeted at such a segment

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#1 The Digital Transformation Playbook- Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

David Rogers in this book has succinctly explained the effects of digital change on legacy business and innovators. He uses case histories and frameworks to explain the rationale that prompts us to adapt to the changing times, as it is the most important thing to do right now. This is a must-read for every executive out there.

#2 Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business 

Replete with rich, illuminating, compelling case studies and examples, Sunil Gupta presents a comprehensive guide to digital transformation. This is an excellent book for all executives who wish to generate a digital tailwind and stay relevant in the next decade with synthesized findings.  

#3 Digital Strategy: A Guide to Digital Business Transformation

Illustrated with stories of technology from the past, the current situation and what could it possibly be in the future, Alexander Rauser emphasizes digital transformation which is an ongoing process. He has addressed the problem head-on by placing a practical framework for a digital strategist and business to follow.

#4 Digital to the Core: Remastering Leadership for Your Industry, Your Enterprise, and Yourself

Every business model is getting upended due to technology. The rise in customer expectation is unparalleled and digital revolution has swept us off our feet. The authors make it a point to help us understand that never before have we grappled with such a number of significant changes at one time. This book provides excellent thought and frameworks to embark on this journey towards a sustainable digital business.  

#5 Digital or Death: Digital Transformation: The Only Choice for Business to Survive Smash and Conquer

A highly informative book on the world of digital strategy, with enough information to keep you motivated and inspired. Daniel Mazzone has the uncanny ability to make you think in ways that you have never done before. This is the go-to book for anyone who wishes to understand digital transformation and embed it in their enterprise.

#6 Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds

Inspiring insights and a genuinely fresh approach, this book surely tells you what it takes to beat the odds in the business. The collective trio present practical advice on the hard and soft side- a rare combo of data, social dynamics and human leadership for the organizations to attain the next level of performance.

#7 Goliath′s Revenge: How Established Companies Turn the Tables on Digital Disruptors

Digital disruption is the new normal and Goliath’s Revenge details how established enterprises and professionals with distinguished careers can start to recognize the unique advantages of their position. It guides you with practical steps on how you need to transform your company and adopt a new growth model. Definitely worth a read!

#8 Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

By discerning the patterns of complex situations of a dysfunctional group or enterprise, Aaron Dignan asks us to live in the present and not look reflectively backward for answers. He offers an ennobling vision for the world of work. By embracing the human complexity in our enterprises, he shows us a new way of working with many styles and perspectives.

#9 Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation

A book for all enterprises who want to master and increase revenue through digital-driven methodologies. It’s replete with real-life and tested frameworks ready to adapt. The authors believe that 94% of the business economy is still untapped and needs to become digital – and they show how to do it by featuring several traditional companies across industries that are successfully leading the digital transformation. This is a must-read for all digital readers who wish to transform their business.  

#10 The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) 

One of the best selling classics on innovation. Sharp, cogent and provocative, this book has been cited by the worlds best-known thought leaders. Showcasing both success and failures of leading enterprises, Christensen explains why most of them miss out in spite of doing everything right. The Innovator’s Dilemma is a read which no manager or leader could afford to miss.

#11 Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

This is a seminal piece of work by bestselling author Clayton M Christensen & Michael Raynor. In the Innovator’s Solution, both the authors explain the idea of disruption in its new avatar. They emphasize how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. This book is an essential addition to any innovation library and an imperative read for entrepreneurs and business builders.

#12 Platform Revolution – How Networked Markets are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You 

A thorough, provocative, and authoritative guide on the role of online platforms. Providing the first comprehensive framework for platform strategy foretelling probable winners and losers of future disruptions.

#13 Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

This book gives an exceptional level of credibility and insight. A must-read for business managers who possess a reasonable level of know-how on AI but find the topic intimidating and confusing.

#14 The Fourth Industrial Revolution

In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Prof. Schwab describes the key technologies driving this revolution, he considers the major impacts on governments, businesses, civil society, and individuals and offers critical ideas on what can be done to shape a better future for all.

#15 Optimizing digital strategy: How to Make Informed, Tactical Decisions that Deliver Growth

Christopher Bones’ Optimizing Digital Strategy explores the choices facing organizations in the rapidly changing world of technology-enabled business. From performance marketing through to personalization, on-demand retailing and AI, this book maps out commercial and customer-focused challenges and explains how leaders can get the most out of their digital strategies

Top Tech news Websites
Blog, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Technology, Weekly Insights

Top 15 Tech News Websites That You Need to Follow in 2019

Tech news Website

In this age of modern technology, where gadgets and digital apps get created by the day, change is the only constant. In order to keep up with the latest, you need to always scan for new information, and soak up the latest news and insights. However, your time for all this is limited, and no one can possibly know or keep track of everything. Fortunately, there are a number of high-quality resources out there that give you all this information in a concise manner and are authoritative and reliable. Here, for example, is a great list of the best tech-related websites that you should absolutely bookmark right now.

#1 Mashable:

Mashable associates itself with not just tech but everything that is related to technology news: gadgets, science, culture, entertainment, business, and more. With plenty of rolling-in content, you would always be in the know of things when it comes to the latest tech news.

#2 The Verge:

The Verge does not limit itself to tech and is deeply diverse. Splitting their topics into various categories, it is the technology section where you would probably do most of your reading. With clearly segmented units, it’s an absolutely easy task to find the relevant content that you are interested to read be it anything from cars to techno-culture.

#3 TechCrunch:

Considered amongst the most popular and well-known sites for their high-quality information. Tech Crunch provides news for the latest gadgets to the most happening technology. Their specialty? Provide news on startups and related event launches, often exclusively. TechCrunch also is the leader when it comes to the online tech blog and media content.  

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    #4 Digital Trends:

    This is one of the largest repositories of technology, computer gaming devices, and lifestyle guides, packed with all sorts of information. Digital Trends cover tech news in a wide array of product categories. And, their standout section is the product reviews one, where they cover everything from earphones to camera etc.

    #5 Term Sheet:

    If you are interested in the finance side of tech, then this is surely the site to visit. Managed by Fortune, Term Sheet presents a daily dose of fundraising, venture capital deals, IPO’s and related industry information.

    #6 The Information:

    When you want The Information and want it deep, look no further, as this is the place to be. With their long-form content and thorough analysis, you are bound to get yourself immersed with a variety of information in the tech industry and be absolutely better informed than the rest.

    #7 The Next Web: 

    While this was actually launched to promote their own event that they were hosting, The Next Web soon became a hub for all sorts of technology news, events, conferences, deals, and even a market intelligence platform. Highly recommended as a must visit website for next-gen gadgets and other tech-related reading.

    #8 VentureBeat:

    Obsessed with covering amazing technology, VentureBeat has all the information that tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and executives need. They are a bunch of devoted folks who provide exhaustive coverage when it comes to technology.

    #9 Wired:

    Almost a household name of sorts when it comes to technology news, Wired is the 3rd most popular media in the technology circles. It publishes helpful guides related to emerging technologies and how it impacts our lives. This is overall a very a well-organized site which delivers a lot of high-quality content for each section.

    #10 Gizmodo:

    With Gizmodo, there’s no shortage of tech- content. It is one of the best online portals for gadget freaks. Focusing mainly on news related to gadgets, guides, and tutorials, you are sure to find an honest opinion on whether a specific device is meriting enough or just hype.

    #11 MakeUseOf:

    Overwhelmed? Don’t be, anymore! MakeUseOf comes to your rescue by simplifying the otherwise confusing tech world. They describe themselves as the guide to modern tech, and they’re right: you can learn a lot by picking up a free ebook to choosing the best router or even how to use Snapchat effectively from their well laid out sections.

    #12 TechRadar:

    Want to know more about “How To” learn awesome tips and tricks to get more out of your tech gadgets. TechRadar is the site to watch out for. Touted as one of the best sources for tech buying advice, there is always plenty of news and reviews on TechRadar.

    #13 Business Insider: 

    A fast-growing deep business site with an emphasis on financial, media, tech and other industry verticals. Business Insider is a site that is followed by many entrepreneurs who are happy to share their knowledge of valuable lessons learned on various social channels.

    #14 Recode:

    Recode enjoys the lion’s share of well-informed and revered journalists in the technology and media space. It is one of the best sources for unbiased tech reviews and analysis. And when you want to read nothing but the best this is surely one of the top sites to visit.

    #15 Futurism: 

    If you enjoy reading about science and technology, then Futurism is the one for you. They have a range of topics starting with the future of humanity, to AI, virtual reality, and renewable energy. If you are a visual learner then Futurism infographics are the best to understand a complex technology which is presented in a lucid manner

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